Govt to upgrade facilities at district, regional hospitals

According to the minister, doctors serving at the rural and district levels were few and as a result, people travelled to the capital city to access health care.

She said this situation only supported the rich and not the poor who found it difficult to receive treatment due to scarce doctors and resorted to herbal treatment instead.

 “I therefore appeal to medical institutions to train more doctors to provide health care assistance as the government intends to upgrade more hospital facilities in the country”, she stressed.

Ms Ayitey urged MDC to work in collaboration with the ministry of health to provide medical services to the nation and to help find concrete solutions in order to address their grievances and challenges accordingly.

She said, this would help establish a platform to address certain challenges such as strikes and impersonators.

She added that it was the vision of the government to have MDC offices decentralised in all the regions to offer medical assistance to patients, particularly the vulnerable in the society.

Doctors, she said, must be disciplined in the practice of their profession more especially in the area of human relations since their profession is human centered.

The Registrar of MDC, Dr Eli K. Atikpui, commended the minister for the government’s initiative of upgrading hospital facilities in all the regions as it would be an advantage for young doctors to have their services at those places, adding that,  “the council has registered 52 per cent qualified medical doctors who operate only in  the greater Accra Region”.

He enumerated some of the challenges facing the MDC as inadequate finances, imposters and lack of law enforcement.

The council, he said, had registered 35 medical training institutions in the country and most of them were dispersed to the regions but lacked proper medical facilities in rendering training to the public.

“We call on the government to put in place stringent actions and sanctions against perpetrators who dent the image of the profession and go scot free without any serious punishment to deter others from doing same”, he said.

Mr Atikpui said, “More stringent measures are being requested in the bill that is being debated in Parliament to protect the profession from impersonators”.

Story by Jennifer Ansah